I asked him about Aginor getting younger at the end of The Eye of the World , and he said ‘no, he doesn’t get younger, he dies’. So I actually looked up the reference and read it to him. He said ‘oh, that,’ and then went on to explain that it is actually the True Power, not the saidin from the Eye, that rejuvenates him. He did describe the saidin in the Eye as a ‘mother-lode’, however, I didn’t think to ask him what he meant by that until I was in the car going home. I instead asked him whether the True Power was the source of the Forsaken’s immortality. He said: yes.
Initially I asked ‘In the end of Eye of the World , when Rand is fighting Aginor, why did Aginor get younger?’
RJ replied ‘He didn’t, he died there. Do you mean the resurrection? He and Balthamel got resurrected in Lord of Chaos .’
I said ‘I know that, but….’ and couldn’t think of anything else. I thought I must have read that part wrong, so while other people were having their books signed, I went through the book and found the line, and read it to him.
RJ said ‘Oh that. That’s actually the power of the Dark One rejuvenating him,’ and went on to basically explain what the True Power is, like I was an idiot.
So then I said ‘So is the True Power the source of their immortality?’
And he said ‘Effectively, yes.’
Some fans picked this line of questioning up in Budapest in 2003 , and RJ said that the Forsaken are not actually immortal; they have merely been promised immortality after the Day of Return. RJ probably meant that the True Power is what kept them alive all the years they were sealed in the Bore.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.